Cantousent

I opted for a bit of FEAR. Anyhow, my brother in law has the x800 and he likes it quite a bit. It's more than adequate to play todays games as long as you don't have to have high resolutions. You can't run every bell and whistle, but you don't have to choose very low settings. hahaha

I'm debating. More of FEAR? ...Or the D2D downloadable version of the Call of Cthulu game? Decisions decisions decisions.

Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair -- The Twilight Singers I'm seriously considering purchasing the whole album.

Well, It's day two. I haven't had much of a chance to get a lot of playing in, but the system has handled FEAR for a while at a time without going nutso on me. I'm still cautiously optimistic. Something I noticed when I was monkying around inside the case, however, is that I might not have taken the face plate off the second part of the video card. The 7900 essentially takes up two slots, one for the video card and the other for the heatsink and cooler. The cooler screws into the opening next to the video output. That cooler has air intake along the whole size and I think I might have completely (as in 100%) blocked the air intake. I'm wondering if maybe I mistakenly caused my own video card problems. If I did, for shame!

Mine too.

I'm actually pretty bad about reading dialogue on subsequent plays. I mean, unless it's one of those great lines that I look forward to reading again, I just click past the fluff on all replays. That's for all games, though.

Oh, be quiet, yutz, and agree to my bargain. I don't care if you're only old enough to buy me a coffee, I'll expect a drink.

You're going about this the wrong way. Hades will be the pregen character with amnesia. He'll love that! Anyhow, I want to say something to my fellow frustrated writers. You can do it. Sure, it will be hard and it will take discipline, but you CAN write a book. I firmly believe that the most help we can give is to believe in each other. I will finish my book. ...And I know that you can finish yours. If you put your mind to it, I know you will finish yours. When I was a student in high school, one of my teachers told me that nothing I did would matter because I would never go to college. Well, it took me some 13 years, but I went to college and finished with two degrees, several awards, including the departmental award in Classical Studies, and with highest honors. Don't tell yourself that your writing sucks. Think of some of the terrible books you've seen. I'm sure your writing, no matter how hard you are on yourself, is better than some of the stuff you've read. Someone is going to be published. It might not be me. It might not be you. ...But someone will be and why shouldn't it be us. Don't convince yourself to accept failure. Never accept it, even when someone tries to force feed it to you. If I fail, then the worst that's going to happen is... what? That folks will know that I had the audacity to believe in myself? Well, then, I will bear that charge gladly. It will be a mark of honor. I never want to see any of you putting down your work again. Sure, say you want to write something better, but don't say that what you've written is bad. That's not for you to decide. I can't stop you from putting down your work, but keep this in mind: at least you have work. Hades mentioned that he'd finished a manuscript a long time ago. He said it was horrible and it wouldn't sell and it was crap. You know, a tiny, tiny fraction of the population finishes writing a manuscript. So, let's make this pledge, the first one of us to publish a book buys a round for the rest of us. Deal?

EDIT: Oh, screw it, I've had enough of Angry Eldar. He is henceforth banished. Vol and I have had enough threads closed. time for me to take the coward's way out and agree to disagree. Even though you did call me arrogant, you yutz.

In every generation, it falls upon one of our number to attempt the impossible. This time, it has fallen upon me. Vol, Diablo has a story. That's the truth. For the very reasons I cited, you don't remember the story. The story only serves as dressing for the gameplay. Nevertheless, if you'd cared to pay any attention to the story, you would have seen that there was a reason and purpose for how the NPCs acted. You would have seen that there was a recurring theme. Maybe, you might even have noticed that the cut scenes tied in very well to the action. That folks tended to overlook the story because of their maddened rush to find more action does not, in any way, mean that the story didn't exist. Hell, the story in Diablo led directly to the story in Diablo 2 and the story in Diablo 2 led directly to the story in Diablo 2: LoD. Now, I know you to be contrarian. That's all well and good. ...But the fact remains, and you've done nothing to refute it, that Diablo had a story. IWD had a story. There's a difference between having no story and having one over which the player has some control.

That's okay, Child. Rebels get themselves killed off.

That's a good point, Bok.

This is what always makes me shake my head. The backstory for Diablo was just as good as anything else out there. The problem wasn't that it lacked a story. The problem, at least from an RPG standpoint, was that the PC didn't have much control over the story other than to advance it. The dialogue wasn't poorly written. It's just that the dialogue has no impact on the game. It's there to tell you what's happening in the story. I understand these complaints. What I don't understand are the folks who claim to like some games for their great "stories" and then turn around and deride Diablo because it didn't have a story. Frankly, the cut-scenes, dialogue, and voice acting is just as good for Diablo as it is for most games out there. Better than most, even.

Well, my new card arrived and I'm cautiously optimistic. I had FEAR running for about an hour. The drivers I have keeping track of the heat update much better than before, but they still don't log. All in all, this has been a bad experience. The card was $489, which is okay, but having to worry about it dying on me takes the joy out of it. It wasn't worth $489 just to worry that the whole thing is going to take a dive on me. On the other hand, I realize that there's always a small percentage of parts that goes bad. If you buy enough and build enough, you're going to get a bad apple. So, in that regard, it's not fair to judge the Asus EN7900GTX harshly. Still, I can't help it if this has left me a little disappointed. All in all, the card performs wonderfully when it doesn't make my system unstable and unusable. I appreciate the good-will. I'll take the various tid-bits of advice to heart. Finally, I'll keep you guys posted as to how my new card works. One thing I'm NOT going to do is baby it. If the card can't handle the normal load without overheating, then I'm switching back to ATi.

Sony has a vested interest in selling blue-ray, that's for sure. I actually like the idea of buying the better system rather than spending it for the game library. To be honest, I don't game much on my xbox. ...But it's a great way to entertain children who visit, I'll play a game every now and then, and it takes the place of a dvd player in my home. I just don't like the way Sony is billing the system and I don't really need a different player right now. I've got one that works. If I were going to get one for the home-theater aspect, I'd have to research more. I don't like the idae of buying a blue-ray. That's especially true after I've seen the blue-ray movies their making part of the initial line-up. Now, if I didn't have anything right now, I'd be more likely to take the risk and buy a PS3 based on what appears to be better system specs. Even then, the PS3 doesn't seem like a clear cut winner.

Frankly, I still don't know what's what. How pervasive is this alleged problem and how reliable is the source. If they've been right in the past, the question is, how reliable is the information they have for this moment. I guess what I'm getting at is, perhaps this situation has improved for the PS3? If they're dealing with old info, then Sony could have seen this problem long ago and fixed it. Furthermore, do they have time to work with the hardware? It's not hitting the shelves for some time to come as I understand it.

How about we put you in the module? :Eldar's ear to ear grin: Actually, I think a module that incorporates all the regulars from this board would be a great tongue in cheek project.

I still believe -- Tim Cappello

Makes sense. You know, something like a NWN2 module, where you share control with the players, makes for some real work. The writing is probably a bit easier because it comes in smaller chunks, but consistency, continuity, and variety are going to be real killers. ...And that's just the writing. What about coding, scripting, and all sorts of other design aspects?

Flesh 'n' Blood -- Oingo Boingo

I don't know if my current writing project would lend itself well to a NWN2 mod. On the other hand, some of my campaigns might work very well in that regard. That one I was running would probably be feasible, although I don't know that it would be easy. My take on NWN/2 mods is that they're difficult no matter what. I enjoy writing campaigns, and most folks seem to enjoy them, but I've never seriously considered trying to translate one into a working module. I guess I can take a look at NWN2 when it comes out, but I would rather be part of a team in that case rather than going at it single handed.

Frankly, I normally don't care what other people like. For example, the worst game I ever played was Timelines. Ugh. Still, I don't look down on others who enjoy it. Same with movies, tv, music, and books. I don't look down on folks who enjoy things I find worthless. However, I have to admit I look down on folks who enjoy the writings of the Marquis de Sade. ...But that's because of the nature of the writing. So, I guess I have to say that I will occasionally hold someone's tastes in disdain, but the threshold is usually quite high.

I've got too much matierial for what I consider a novela at this point. I've written short stories and poetry, but I had a longer story in mind. The most important thing is that I have an outline. Hell, I'll be happy if I can finish this within the fifteen or so chapters I've got planned. If I continue to have the same sort of mission creep I've seen so far, the whole project will probably be a third again as large as I'd planned. That's not so bad, but I would like to finish it. It's like taks said, it's like making a long run. With enough determination, you can do it, but it just takes so long. After I'm done, I'll probably post some for the folks here. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but mostly I'm just concentrating on finishing the story.

My wife thinks of it as a mystery. My sister thinks of it as science fiction. I think of it as the story about people.

My singular pleasure, alan.